Exploration of a Reverse Turbo-Brayton Cryocooler for Carbon Neutral Aeronautical Applications

Exploration of a Reverse Turbo-Brayton Cryocooler for Carbon Neutral Aeronautical Applications: Integrated Cryocooler Design and Tank Modeling for Cryogenic Liquid Hydrogen in Long Range Flight

Swart, Mik (TU Delft Aerospace Engineering)

Pini, M. (mentor)
de Servi, C.M. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Aerospace Engineering

2024-05-17

Climate change is a pressing issue. Hydrogen aircraft are an excellent alternative to current kerosene aircraft, and appear to be the most viable long-term solution for net-zero flight. One of the main challenges for hydrogen aircraft is to sustain a low boil-off rate. This research explores the solution of active cooling of the LH2 mixture in the fuel tank. It focusses on the construction of a thermodynamic model for cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel storage in aircraft, a system model for single-stage Reverse Turbo-Brayton Cryocoolers (RTBC), and the conceptual design of the RTBC’s miniature high-speed compressor. This is used for the integrated modelling of the RTBC, compressor and LH2 fuel tank for an exploration study of the carbon neutral hydrogen concept of the long-range Flying-V aircraft. Results show that the RTBC might offer a valuable addition to the Flying-V design space for boil-off control in addition to careful design of the insulation and tank shape.

RTBC
Reverse Turbo-Brayton
Cryocooler
Hydrogen aircraft
Modelling
Turbomachinery
Liquid hydrogen
Compressor
Two-phase model
Thermodynamic Modeling
Boil-off
carbon net-zero
Flying V
Hydrogen Tank
Fuel Tank
Propulsion
Flight Performance
Cryogenic Tanks
Cryogenics
cryogenic liquid
Scaling Analysis
integrated modeling
Modelica
Python
Optimisation
parametric analysis
Design
Thermodynamics
Zero-boil-off
LH2

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6913e433-f639-4642-bd4e-ce8297b5d623

Student theses

master thesis

© 2024 Mik Swart